On The Outside Looking In
by MortisBane
Summary: Mathew's POV on Alfred's situation. Based off my story Please Be My Hero! and my own personal feelings. Don't really care if you read or not.


**A/N: Spur of the moment don't ask where this came from. Mathew's POV**

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I feel horrible, like a wast of space. I sit by idly as my brother is hurt beyond belief, yet I do nothing to help. Each day he's worse then the last, and as each day goes he becomes more and more distant. I try to remain by his side, but I find it too difficult and just watch from a distance. I always try to reach out to him and enter the bubble he encases himself in but each time I am met with resistance. Mom tries too but I can tell he refuses her more than me. I can't stand this feeling of hopelessness, watching him go through this pain and I just stand there mortified, never willing to help. I always find myself crying to my self, for his well being and at how pathetic I am. Day in, day out I am just a shadow, I watch from a distance and do nothing but remain there. I have become utterly disgusted in my self, I have become just as horrible as dad or the kids at school who hurt my brother, all because I don't lift a finger to save my own flesh and blood. Whenever we come home he locks himself in his room and wont come out until dinner, I sometimes hear him crying in there and I try to go in and comfort him but he pushes me away, each and every time. I never knew what he's doing in there but I knew it can't be good for him. One day while he was out shopping with mom I had entered his room and searched it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, it was dirty and messy which is to be expected. It looked like a normal teenage boy's room, but looks can most certainly be deceiving. While snooping I found a knife hidden under a pile of dirty clothes, my first thought was it was left when he ate dinner in here a few nights ago, doubt had trickled into my mind but I shoved it away not even wanting to contemplate the idea. Now I shiver in disgust at myself for being so ignorant. After thoroughly searching the room I found nothing but a first aid kit, but I have one in my room too, there's one in every room as to mom's precautions, so I didn't even check the contents to see if maybe there was an over use of something. I had left the room believing that Alfred was just troubled and needed some indirect comfort. Nothing much had happened and Alfred never brought up the fact that he found a knife on his bed, and I hadn't ever seen that knife back in the kitchen afterward. Seeing that my indirect comfort was doing nothing to aid my ailing brother I tried to get closer to him. My first few attempts were failures and only seemed to widen the gap between us. But that one fateful March day everything changed. I tried again to get closer to him with a simple excuse, my math homework. He was smart and his best subject was math, so I came up with the excuse that I needed his help with my homework. I was so happy and believed that it was going to work. I opened the door while calling out to him and I was shocked to find the door unlocked for once, that boosted my confidence. However when I opened the door the world seemed to shatter around me. I found Alfred sitting on the floor eyes wide as he stared at me, in his hand was a blood covered knife and even more blood was trickling down his open arm. My books fell from my arms and my heart stopped. My brother, my own flesh and blood had resorted to something so vile, it made me want to collapse on the spot and cry. But I couldn't, ignoring his lies I ran up to him trying to find the reason why he would do this to himself. The answer didn't surprise me but I couldn't help but somehow blame this on me. Against my better judgment I agreed to keep this a secret between us. That image still haunts me to this day and I hate myself for not noticing this sooner. I never deemed my brother as stupid, in fact he's very smart and we both knew that. But I suppose book smarts and common sense are two different things on the scale of intelligence. I made sure after this incident to watch him carefully and things seemed to get back to normal where they should be. But I again was too ignorant to see the problem staring me directly in the face. When I found out the second time around it wasn't in a better situation than the first. Alfred was in the shower and I had walked in the grab something out of the medicine cabinet. I saw no reason that seeing my brother naked would be a problem, we are brothers, but he had freaked out more than I thought he would. Just to joke with him I had opened the shower curtain and have a little fun but what I saw was not in the least bit funny. I saw Alfred stark naked, which was to be expected, but for the second time I saw blood trickling down his freshly opened arm. The tears came and many feelings entered me. Betrayal, hurt, sadness, confusion, my heart shattered and I collapsed on the floor in a heap of tears. Alfred tried to comfort me and sway my thought into thinking that, 'it wasn't what it looked like' but I was having none of it. Coldness seeped into my heart and I found myself only hating me in this situation, in my eyes he was the victim of my negligence. I recovered as quickly as I could and bandaged him up before hugging him with all of my might, not even caring that he was stark naked. I kept telling him how sorry I was and continuously blamed myself for this and couldn't help the hatred I felt for myself. I kept my promise to him, one of us has to be trust worthy here, and so I never told mom what happened. I still beat myself up over that decision. After seeing that I had no impact on my brother I found myself becoming very bitter. The betrayal never left me but neither did my self hatred. To this day my thoughts will sometimes shift to the past, granted Alfred has gotten better since then but it doesn't stop the past from resurfacing haunting all of us. I still blame myself, I still believe that I could have prevented all of this from happening, but I just try to keep my thoughts elsewhere as to not shove my self and those around me into a depression. Somehow I know though, even though Alfred's better and he has let all of us in there is a space he wont let anyone, where he hides all of his true feelings, and I will forever be on the outside looking in.

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**A/N: Okay this may be the most feeling I've put into my stories. I don't care if you don't like it or don't care, this was for me to release my feelings.**


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